Solve it with a sticky note
Many years ago, I went to an offsite where the executive in charge had planned a values exercise. We all had to write down our top values on sticky notes. Then we pasted everything on the whiteboard, organized the notes into similar clusters, and voila! The top vote-getters became our official team values.
Leaving the exercise, our three team values were:
- Win no matter what
- People come first
- The customer is always right
Read those again slowly. When the values came into conflict, were we supposed to prioritize people, winning, or customers? Uh oh.
You know you're heading for trouble when all three values contain language like "no matter what" and "come first" and "always right." There was no practical way for the values to make any sense together.
Needless to say, the values also had no relationship to what actually got people hired, promoted, or fired on the team. A few months later when someone asked the exec in charge about the values in an all-hands, he sheepishly admitted he didn't remember what they were.
Polling your team is a terrible way to figure out what you stand for. So why do leaders go through the charade?
Don't ask for feedback you don't want
Nothing makes people feel less heard than asking for their feedback and then ignoring it. It is far worse than not asking at all.
In the workplace, this happens all the time. Vendors ask customers for product feedback, then resolve all the issues as being by design. Companies run employee engagement surveys, then ignore what they hear. But among the many places this happens, perhaps none is more gaslighting than polling people about their values and pretending that their opinions change yours.
The work is the culture, the culture is the work
Have you ever heard anyone say things like:
- "He isn't good at his job, but he's great for the culture"
- "The business is bad, but the culture is good"
"He's great for the culture" usually means "he is nice." "The culture is good" means something like "everyone takes Fridays off."
I always find this a little surprising. In your ideal culture, are your coworkers nice, but bad at their jobs? Do people take Fridays off while the business is circling the drain?
It's hard to imagine a thriving workplace where being nice is more important than being competent. But people often use "good culture" as a kind of shorthand for "nice," even if this doesn't reflect most leaders' real cultural values when pressed.
The simplest way to understand a team's real values is to answer three questions:
- What gets people hired?
- What gets people promoted?
- What gets people fired?
More than anything else, the way leaders handle those three situations shows what they value. Show me what gets people paid, and I'll show you what the leader cares about.
Show, don't tell
When you start focusing on what gets people paid, you'll often notice explicit contradictions with what leaders say they value. Any of these situations sound familiar?
- The company values talk about team-first behavior, but the loud prima donna is the one who keeps getting promoted
- The leader goes on about accountability, but no one on the team ever gets fired no matter how many deliverables they miss
- The company espouses meritocracy, but somehow the boss's favorite is the one who always comes away with the best opportunities
- The company talks a big game about its commitment to fair pay, but anyone with an external job offer can talk their way into a big raise
We can all think of examples where the official values stance is one thing, but the real situation on the ground is quite different. Scenarios like this happen in every workplace, and leaders are not always conscious of it. But if you ask employees to point out places they see misalignment between the leader's stated values and reality, they are remarkably adept.
The best thing you can do as a leader is be honest about what your values are. With yourself and with everyone around you. Your values won't be for everyone, but they will be right for the people who will thrive on your team.
The bottom line: You can ask people what their values are. You can't ask them what yours are. Yours are the values you're really using to make decisions, so the least you can do is be honest about what they are.
Kieran
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